This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Multiband antennas typically include multiple antennas to cover and operate at multiple frequency ranges. A printed circuit board (PCB) having radiating antenna elements is a typical component of a multiband antenna assembly. Another typical component of a multiband antenna assembly is an external antenna, such as a whip antenna rod. The multiband antenna assembly may be mounted to an antenna mount (e.g., NMO (New Motorola) mount, etc.), which, in turn, is installed or mounted on a vehicle surface, such as the roof, trunk, or hood of the vehicle, or ground plane of a machine. The antenna mount may be interconnected (e.g., by a coaxial cable, etc.) to one or more electronic devices (e.g., a radio receiver, a touchscreen display, GPS navigation device, cellular phone, etc.) inside the passenger compartment of the vehicle, such that the multiband antenna is operable for transmitting and/or receiving signals to/from the electronic device(s) inside the vehicle by the antenna mount.
An antenna assembly may be combined with other application antennas for multi antenna configurations to support various needs, e.g., GPS antenna, UHF Whip, VHF Whip, LTE Whip, etc. Due to having greater design freedom, an antenna assembly can be duplicated into multiple antennas over a ground plane and subsequently having the antenna operate in Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) configuration.